Dear Santana
by Alex Rothmand
Summary: Finn had brain cancer, and the doctors tell him to write letters to his loved ones. He's said goodbye to his family already, and so the one person he knows he has to say goodbye to is the one girl he's never told how he felt.


**Warning: Super depressing fic.**

**Triggers: brain cancer and death.**

**So this is what happens when you combine depressing music with a lack of sleep. You get really depressing Finntana fanfics. The summary really said it all. Finn has brain cancer, and the one person he writes a letter to is the girl he'd always loved. Review, please, but no flames!**

**Disclaimer: I think it's pretty obvious that, if I owned Glee, none of this stupid Finchel shit would be happening. So we can safely assume that I don't own Glee.**

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_Dear Santana,_

_By the time you read this, it'll be over. I'll be gone, and nobody will ever see me again. But I figured, before I leave, I'd leave you with this. This one last thing to tell you the most important thing I've ever known. And that's that I love you. I've loved you since we were five years old, and I'll always love you, even after death. It seems kind of scary, loving somebody even after you're dead, but I loved you through a lot more than that, so I think I can handle it. Point is, you need to know how much I love you before I die, and this is the only way I can tell you._

_When I was five years old, I was in the sandbox, playing with my friends. We were goofing off, being our usual selves, and I saw this girl. She was the prettiest girl on the playground, or some of my friends would say. That wasn't you. That was Quinn Fabray. Puck said to me, "Dude, totally gonna bang her in high school." And now I look back on five-year old Puck, how he thought "bang" meant playing Battleship, and how true his words had been. The little fucker was like a prophet or something. But I didn't really look at Quinn. I mean, I did, since I'm a guy, but I was more concerned with the girl off to the side, drawing and playing hopscotch. That was you. I thought you were pretty. Quinn was pretty, too, but I was looking at you. Quinn knew she was pretty like everyone else knew. You acted like you didn't care, and that was what made me think you were pretty, that you were pretty without having to try. You could just wake up, play hopscotch, and look pretty. Quinn had to actually try._

_Then, when we were ten, we got assigned to sit next to each other in math class. I didn't get math, even then. I had no idea what was going on. I struggled with decimals. The simplest fractions and percentages were lost on me. I spent hours after school with our math teacher, trying desperately to figure it out. You, however, knew all the answers. You could do the math homework in your sleep. I'm not going to lie. I've got no reason to now, but I'll tell you. I cheated off your paper on that test about percentages. I didn't know what was going on, and you finished early, so I just copied some of your answers. Sorry, I guess._

_By the time I was fourteen, we were freshmen in high school. Everything changed that year. I was the up-and-coming new football star. People liked me. You were one of the three: you, Quinn, and Brittany. You girls were practically unstoppable. 'Course, Quinn was Head Cheerio by sophomore year, and so everyone expected me to date her. I had a flashback of when we were five, and I realized I didn't want to. I wanted to date you, but of course, I couldn't. I had to date Quinn. That was, like, a rule or something. Either way, I had to. So I did. And you know what a disaster that was._

_Now, this is the part of the story nobody knows, not even Quinn. Only my mom, Burt, Kurt, and Ms. Pillsbury know. And Mr. Schue, 'cause I didn't want Ms. P to have to hide this from him, and he's kind of a father figure, I guess. When I was sixteen, I used to get these really bad headaches. Like, really bad. I couldn't sleep. Sometimes I couldn't eat. I couldn't stand to do anything except lie in bed, groaning in pain. So my mom took me to the doctor. They ran an MRI, and a few hours later, they told me that I was sick. Brain cancer, they said. Stage three, they said. I didn't have a very good chance. It explained my inability to learn, my clumsiness outside of football. My weak vocabulary, my terrible dancing, and my inability to focus were all explained in those two words: brain tumor._

_I'm not going to lie. I was terrified. I didn't want to die. But I had options. So I took a month over the summer, and I had surgery. My hair grows pretty fast, so it covered the scars. And things were good for a while. But then the tumor grew back. And then I just got angry. Things weren't going my way. I dated Quinn, and she cheated on me. I had a brain surgery, and the tumor grew back. My life was shit._

_Now, it's been a year, and I'm at stage four. There's nothing they can do. It'd be too dangerous to try surgery, and it's been resistant to radiation and chemotherapy, both of which I've tried. They said I should write these letters to people, anybody I want to say goodbye to. I've said goodbye to my parents. I've said goodbye to Kurt. I've said goodbye to them. But I don't think I can say goodbye to you, not in person. It'd hurt too much. I never got to tell you how I felt about you. I never got to say that you were the reason I fought that cancer so hard. You were the reason I didn't give up until now. Because I hadn't told you how I felt, I tried every kind of way to survive. For you. But it wasn't enough. And by now, I'm dying. I've made peace with that. But I had to tell you, before I left, that I love you. I love you, Santana._

_If there's one thing I can ask of you, one thing I need you to do for me, I just want you to promise me that you won't forget me. That's what I'm scared of the most. I'm scared that you'll forget who I was. I don't care if you move on, if you never loved me, but please just don't forget me, because I could never forget you. I don't regret sleeping with you. I should tell you that too. I don't regret that night, and I never have. That was the one night I could pretend that I wasn't dying, and that I had you. That was actually a great night. You helped me that night, more than you knew at the time. So thank you, Santana. Thank you._

_By the time you read this, it'll be over. I'll be gone, and nobody will ever see me again._

_I love you, Santana Lopez._

_Finn Hudson._

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Santana dropped her hand, staring blankly in front of her. Tears fell down her face, and her fellow glee clubbers looked on in confusion. Quinn tried to comfort her, but she shook the other girl off. She slid down to the floor, back against the wall, as her hand came up to cover her mouth. Her tears started coming audibly now, developing into sobs, and she felt an arm go around her shoulders. She saw that it was Puck, both her and Finn's best friend. And Santana couldn't do anything except lean forward and collapse into his arms, completely breaking down.

She clutched the letter in an iron grip, refusing to let it go. If she did, she'd be letting go of Finn. She'd be letting go of the boy she never had, the boy she wished she'd loved more. She'd be letting go of him, of his memory, of everything he ever was. And she couldn't bear to do that. It was all she could do to cry into Puck's shoulder, his strong arms shielding her from the eyes of other people in the room. "I love him," she sobbed into Puck's neck, and he nodded.

"I know, San," he said, and Santana knew that was the truth. Puck wasn't stupid. He'd called Santana out on her bullshit plenty of times before, and this was some of the bullshit he'd called her out on. He said that she was lying to herself, that she was like that bully in third grade that pulled the hair of the girl that he liked. Santana was acting like that, and she knew it. She loved him, and Puck knew it without her even having to tell him. "I know."


End file.
